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03 July 2008 / John Cooper KC
Issue: 7328 / Categories: Features
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Held to account

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The government should avoid introducing knee-jerk legislation to allow witnesses to give evidence anonymously, warns John Cooper

One of the central political themes of the last decade is the fundamental need within society that people should be held to account for their actions. Earlier this year a 14-year-old girl was sentenced to 18 months detention for falsely accusing her brother and his friend of indecently assaulting her when she was nine. The Court of Appeal recently quashed the sentence, observing that it “should never have been passed”, they substituted an 18-month supervision order on the child.

In this country, the age of criminal responsibility begins at 10, the lowest of any European country. Doli incapax was succinctly abolished here by s 34 of the Crime and Disorder Act 1998. The section read “the rebuttable presumption of criminal law that a child aged 10 or over is incapable of committing an offence is hereby abolished”. Within six lines, the Act had moved on to abolishing the death penalty for treason and piracy.

It represents a

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